Ep 2: Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism — Religion, Memory, and the Father

Episode 2: Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism — Religion, Memory, and the Father In this episode, I explore Sigmund Freud’s provocative final work, Moses and Monotheism, one of the most controversial psychoanalytic interpretations of biblical religion. Freud approaches Moses not only as the great lawgiver of the Hebrew Bible, but as a powerful father figure at the centre of religious memory, guilt, authority, and identity. His argument is bold and unsettling: that monotheism may be bound up with trauma, repression, collective memory, and the return of what a people cannot fully forget. This episode looks at Freud’s reading of Moses through several psychological themes: the father and the law, the burden of conscience, the birth of monotheism, the Exodus as liberation and discipline, the golden calf as a return to visible comfort, and the deep ambivalence human beings feel toward authority. Whether accepted or rejected as history, Freud’s Moses and Monotheism remains a fascinating attempt to understand religion through the unconscious — not simply as belief, but as memory, guilt, longing, rebellion, and moral formation. Themes explored: Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Moses, Exodus, monotheism, psychoanalysis, religion, the father, law, guilt, repression, collective memory, Judaism, the unconscious, the golden calf, freedom and responsibility.